Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk

Australia Senate backs carbon tax

Australia is the developed world's worst polluter per head of population

Australia's Senate has approved a controversial law on pollution, after years of bitter political wrangling.

The Clean Energy Act will force the country's 500 worst-polluting companies to pay a tax on their carbon emissions from 1 July next year.

The Senate vote is a victory for Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who had given strong backing to the plan.

Environmentalists have broadly backed the scheme, but there have been large public protests against it.

Opposition parties have argued that the tax would cause job losses and raise the cost of living, and they have promised to repeal the legislation if they win the next election, due in 2013.

'Victory for optimists'

The bill passed a vote in the lower house last month by just 74 votes to 72.

The Senate vote was also tight - 36 votes in favour, 32 against - with the government relying on the support of the Greens to get the bill passed.

Ms Gillard told a news conference it was "a win for those who would seek their fortunes and make their way by having jobs in our clean energy sector".

"Today we have made history. After all those years of debate and division, our nation has got the job done," she said.

The government has set the initial price per tonne of carbon at A$23 ($23.80; £14.80), much higher than other similar schemes such as in the EU where the price is between $8.70 and $12.60 a tonne.

The country's mining firms, airlines, steel makers and energy firms are among those expected to be hardest hit by the tax.

Domestic fuel bills are expected to rise as companies pass on the costs to consumers.

But the government hopes that the legislation will force innovation in renewable energy supplies, and free Australia from its reliance on fossil fuels.

The country accounts for 1.5% of the world's emissions, but it is the developed world's highest emitter per head of population thanks to its relatively small population.

The country's politicians have been debating pollution-limiting legislation for years.

Former Prime Minster Kevin Rudd swept to power in 2007 after making the carbon tax central to his election campaign.

But his plans were bogged down in political infighting and public support evaporated.

Analysts have blamed his inability to get the law passed for his eventual ousting by Ms Gillard.

Continue reading the main story PROPOSED CARBON TAX To start on 1 July 2012 500 companies affected Agriculture, forestry and land are exempt Compensation for polluters Market-based trading scheme kicks in from 2015 Target to cut 159m tonnes of CO2 by 2020

Continue reading the main story Analysis Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News The vote in theory brings to an end a long-running and, in a global sense, highly symbolic issue. Symbolic because Australia is one of the world's highest per-capita emitters and has an economy that is more reliant than most on energy-intensive industries such as mining, including coal. Yet of all developed countries, Australia is set to feel impacts of climate change earlier than most, and arguably is seeing them already in the recent severe droughts. It also has immense potential for renewable electricity, particularly in the area of solar; and some are hoping the carbon tax and subsequent trading mechanism will kick-start a renewables revolution. Whether the carbon tax is high enough to do that, though, is unclear. And investors may be restrained by the opposition's vow to repeal the law if it gains office in 2013. Emissions trading is scheduled for introduction in 2015. The European experience is that without tight caps on emissions, the carbon price remains far too low to stimulate change on the scale scientists calculate is necessary.

Continue reading the main story Related Stories Canberra's season of protest Carbon tax divides Australia The great 'Cate Debate'

From other news sites Financial Times* Australia passes carbon tax laws 2 hrs ago RTE Online Australia passes carbon pollution tax 2 hrs ago Mineweb Australian Senate signs carbon tax into law 2 hrs ago Japan Today Australia passes controversial carbon pollution tax 3 hrs ago Reuters UK Australia passes landmark carbon price laws 8 hrs ago About these results * May require registration or subscription Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

 

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Amplify’d from latimesblogs.latimes.com

Asteroid YU55 headed toward Earth: First images released

An asteroid about the size of an aircraft carrier was hurtling toward us Monday night, following an orbit that will take it within 201,700 miles of Earth, as measured from the center of the planet. As has been much reported, that's closer to us than the moon is. Scientists at NASA have been tracking the asteroid, named YU55, on a daily basis since Friday. On Monday, at 11:45 a.m. Pacific, they took the above picture of the asteroid using a 70-meter radio telescope. The photo, shot from NASA's Deep Space Network in Goldstone, Calif., might be a little more exciting if it were a bit less pixelated. But we can forgive the fuzziness -- after all, the asteroid was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, from Earth when the image was taken. Scientists will continue to take more photos of the space rock as it approaches Earth. Despite being relatively large and coming relatively close to the Earth, the asteroid will still not be visible to the naked eye. Part of the reason YU55 is so interesting to the scientific community is because similar asteroids played a major role in our planet's past -- and they have the potential to play a major role in the future of humankind. Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, told The Times that asteroids colliding with Earth in the extremely distant past may have been responsible for bringing the water and carbon material that has made life on the planet possible. And in the future, scientists say, these asteroids may serve as watering holes and fueling stations for interplanetary travel. "We may one day be able to mine asteroids, and if we start colonizing the solar system, they will be our fueling stations," scientist Marina Brozovic said in an interview. She's a member of the JPL Goldstone radar team tracking the asteroid. You won't be able to see YU55 without a telescope, but be on the lookout for pictures of what scientists will be seeing. "It's really quite an opportunity," Yeomans said. "It's not very often that something this good gets this close." -- Deborah Netburn RELATED: White House on aliens: No contact yet, but we're looking Asteroid YU55 coming, will swing nearer to Earth than the moon Asteroid YU55 to swing close by Earth on Tuesday. Can we see it? Image: This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on Nov. 7, 2011, at 11:45 a.m. Pacific (2:45 p.m. Eastern), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, or 1.38 million kilometers, from Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com

 

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Amplify’d from in.reuters.com

Church-backed abortion bill sparks protest in Russia

By Alissa de Carbonnel

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Women of all ages used to fill gynecologist Lyubov Yerofeyeva's Soviet state clinic, lined up by the dozen for back-to-back abortions. "It was more common to take sick days for an abortion than for a cold in those days," she said.

Two decades after the Soviet Union's collapse, wider availability of contraception and a resurgence of religion have reduced the numbers of abortions overall, but termination remains the top method of birth control in Russia.

Its abortion rate -- 1.3 million, or 73 per 100 births in 2009 -- is the world's highest.

Backed by the Russian Orthodox Church, an influential anti-abortion lobby is driving a moral crusade to tighten legislation and shift public attitudes that are largely a legacy of the Soviet era.

Adding to the debate is the Russian government's effort to reverse a population decline caused by low birth rates combined with very high death rates. With Russians dying nearly twice as fast as they are born, the United Nations predicts that by 2050 its population will shrink by almost one fifth to 116 million.

Women's rights groups voice outrage that the Church would play a role in shaping Russia's secular laws and say abortion must remain a choice. They acknowledge the statistics point to a public health travesty but suggest the problem would be better resolved by sex education.

At the heart of the debate is an amendment to Russia's law on health that is all but guaranteed to pass in the lower house after it was approved in a critical second of three readings on October 21.

The law would cap abortions at 12 weeks, impose a waiting period of up to one week from initial consultations and require women over six weeks pregnant to see the embryo on ultrasound, hear its heartbeat and have counseling to determine how to proceed.

"Our two main motives are the fact that Russia is dying out and our religious tradition. We cannot forget our faith," Yelena Mizulina, chair of the family issues committee that fielded the law, told Reuters. "Despite the long Communist period, it is seen as murder, as a violation of the ten commandments."

Russia's sharp demographic crisis, she said, adds to the urgency. "America is not threatened with extinction, it can afford to be more lenient," Mizulina said.

DWINDLING POPULATION

The government has worked hard to foster a baby boom, honoring big families at pomp-filled Kremlin events, offering subsidies to parents with more than one child and even raffling off cars to women who give birth on the national holiday.

Experts say only migration can help plug the demographic black hole, but that is a solution with potentially explosive side effects given the country's ethnic tensions.

Fear that mostly Muslim migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus will replace a dwindling ethnic Russian populace have helped fuel the Orthodox Church's newly vocal role on abortion and other issues since the demise of the atheist Soviet Union.

One of the prominent personalities promoting the Church's position on the issue is Russia's devout first lady Svetlana Medvedeva, whose Foundation for Social and Cultural Initiatives held a national week-long campaign in July dubbed "Give Me Life!"

Such initiatives have sparked protests. More than 150 human rights and feminist groups signed a global petition against the measures last month, while others have staged rallies in Moscow.

At one such demonstration, a handful of young activists unfurled banners with the slogans: "Fight Abortion, Not Women," "My Body Is My Body," and "Better Abortion than Bad Parenting."

"Why should a priest decide what I do with my body?" said one young feminist, Dina Orlova, 31, objecting to the inclusion of priests on an expert council that drafted the Russian bill.

But the Church says Russians are ready to see more limits.

"Attitudes are clearly changing swiftly and should be reflected in politics and the law," spokesman Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said. In a first victory for the anti-abortion camp, lawmakers approved legislation in July requiring abortion advertisements to carry health warnings. [ID:nLDE76017F]

Nevertheless, stricter rules -- requiring parental consent for young women under 18 or spousal approval for married women and eliminating state support for abortions -- were left off the new draft bill after polls showed them to be unpopular, Mizulina said.

One of the next steps, she said, is banning over-the-counter sales of the so-called morning-after pill -- which she called "poison".

SEX EDUCATION

The Soviet Union was the first country to legalize abortion, in 1920, but dictator Josef Stalin outlawed it in 1936, seeking to boost births, and it was illegal until after his 1955 death.

Women's groups point to a surge in deaths from illegal abortions under the total ban.

"They should look to history: If a woman doesn't want to have a baby, she'll end her pregnancy with a coat hanger," said Yerofeyeva, who set up the non-profit Russian Association for Population and Development (RANIR) in the 1990s to promote sex education.

"Women do not owe the state, they don't have to give birth like machines," she said.

Her organization used to receive state financing before funding for the majority of family-planning programs was slashed when Russia defaulted on its debt in 1998.

Today Russia has no sex education in schools.

The only way to reduce abortions, Yerofeyeva said, is to disabuse women of " stigmas " and "superstitions" handed down from Soviet times, when condoms made in the Eastern bloc were not only scarce but notoriously thick, uncomfortable and prone to break, while Soviet-made intrauterine (IUDs) often did not work.

Patients and physicians were equally skeptical

about first-generation, high-dosage oral contraceptives, believing hormones to be responsible for all manner of ills and discomforts.

With the arrival to the market of modern methods of contraception in the 1990s, abortion rates fell by almost a third but have since dropped more slowly. Experts say women using the pill as their main line of defense against unwanted pregnancy remains low, below 20 percent.

"'There was no sex in the USSR'," gender-studies expert Irina Kosterina said, quoting a Communist party official whose off-color comment remain a poignant joke on Soviet-era taboos.

Many women remain shy about consulting gynecologists or talking about sex, particularly with their partners , about how to avoid unwanted pregnancy or protect against sexually transmitted diseases, she said.

"Our sexual revolution came 30 years later than in the West and was only for a very small class of women," Kosterina said.

Only ten percent of Russian women who abort are ending a first pregnancy, she said, adding most have one or two children.

At a peach-and-teal toned private clinic, Irina, 27, was having her second operation in

a little over a year. Unmarried, with a mortgage and parents in a faraway provincial city, she said she cannot afford a child.

"Besides, my boyfriend doesn't want it," she said -- but admitted that they do not use any regular form of contraception.

(Editing by Steve Gutterman and Sonya Hepinstall) Read more at in.reuters.com

 

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MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM: ARE THEY ONE AND THE SAME?

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

FANTASTIC VOYAGE 1966 MOVIE TRAILER

Mind-Blowing NASA Video Shows Motion of Stars

Hubble Helps Fast-Forward the Motion of Stars

By Dave Mosher

To human eyes, stars seem like some of the most unmoving objects in the universe. From the perspective of thousands of years, however, they swarm like bees.

The Hubble Space Telescope has helped bring to life such motion in 100,000 stars drifting around within a distant celestial blob called Omega Centauri, a globular cluster orbiting the Milky Way galaxy about 16,000 light-years from Earth.

To create the video above, Hubble took photos of Omega Centauri from 2002 to 2006. But the video doesn’t show that period. Instead, it’s a computer-powered projection of the next 10,000 years deduced from the snapshots.

“All of the stars in the cluster are orbiting around the center of the cluster, kind of like bees buzzing around a beehive,” said Jay Anderson, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore who helped model the stars’ motions. “If they weren’t moving then they would all fall into the center.”

Previous studies of the globular cluster — the brightest in the night sky — hinted that a massive black hole may be lurking at the center. But Roeland van der Marel, also an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute who worked on the research, said the motions he and his team helped tease out tell a different story.

“The case for such a black hole is weaker than it was before,” van der Marel said. “If there is a black hole in the center of the cluster, it cannot be as massive as had been previously suggested.”



Video: The projected motions of stars over the next 10,000 years at the heart of the Omega Centauri globular cluster.

NASA/ESA/Jay Anderson and Roeland van der Marel/STScI

Image: A sample of the projected motions of Omega Centauri stars at the globular cluster’s core. Each streak is about 600 years’ worth of motion. The space between plotted dots represents about a 30-year gap.

NASA/ESA/Jay Anderson and Roeland van der Marel/STScI

“Sperm Comet” Recent Discovery to Treat Sperm Infertility

by Dinesh Chandra Gaur

The UK fertility experts have claimed to develop a simple test that allows couples to be fast-tracked to the treatment which is most likely to succeed against the conventional IVF treatments and protect them from the tough financial stress of repeated unsuccessful struggles with AVF.



Panos Lioulias, of Queen’s University Belfast’s business arm claimed that the Sperm Comet is the only available test that can support clinics to customize treatments as per the patient need hence, enhances the chance of success.

Most of the clinics evaluate the quality of a man’s sperm through the observation of simple parameters including shape, speed and concentration under the microscope. Whereas the recent test, developed by highly proficient fertility doctor Professor Sheena Lewis, is directed to check the sperms at a higher level, that checks tiny tears and even breaks in sperm’s DNA, said Panos Lioulias.

During the development process, it was observed that sperms observed with some damages in their genetic material are less likely to cause a pregnancy and even if a women conceives, she is expected to encounter miscarry.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of Care Fertility, Britain's biggest private provider of IVF to NHS patients said: "I can understand why the NHS is bringing in this policy, but what must be hard for couples is seeing the man in the street who smokes 50 fags a day, and has six kids”.

Introducing the SpermComet^™

The SpermComet^™ looks just like a ‘comet’ in the sky. Here the tail of the SpermComet™ is the damaged DNA.  We can look at your sperm individually and measure any damage. This gives you a much more detailed result than other tests.

What do the results mean?

Using the Sperm Comet^™ test to diagnose male infertility

Under 25%:

Men have no detectable sperm DNA problems

Over 25%:

Men with sperm DNA damage have a high risk of infertility and are less likely to get their partners pregnant naturally.  If you fall into this group, you should seek a referral to a fertility clinic from your family doctor

Using the SpermComet^™ test to predict your success with fertility treatment

You can also use this test to determine your chances of success with fertility treatment. Fertility clinics will offer you three types of treatment.

26-49%:

men with sperm DNA damage between 26-49% have a high chance of success with IVF

Over 50%:

men with sperm DNA damage over 50% have a high risk of failure with IVF treatment.   If treatment is planned, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is more likely to be successful than IVF if sperm DNA damage is above this value.

The SpermComet™ test also gives information about the sperm prepared in the lab for ART  treatment

Over 40%:

men with DNA damage over 40% in sperm prepared for ART  have a high risk of failure with IVF treatment.   If treatment is planned, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is more likely to be successful than IVF if sperm DNA damage is above this value.

Hubble data used to look 10,000 years into the future

Astronomers are used to looking millions of years into the past. Now scientists have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to look thousands of years into the future. Looking at the heart of Omega Centauri, a globular cluster in the Milky Way, they have calculated how the stars there will move over the next 10 000 years.

The globular star cluster Omega Centauri has caught the attention of sky watchers ever since the early astronomer Ptolemy first catalogued it 2000 years ago. Ptolemy thought Omega Centauri was a single star and probably wouldn't have imagined that his "star" was actually a beehive swarm of nearly 10 million stars, all orbiting a common centre of gravity.

The stars are so tightly crammed together in the cluster that astronomers had to wait for the Hubble Space Telescope before they could look deep into the core of the "beehive" and resolve the individual stars. Hubble's vision is so sharp that it can even measure the motion of many of these stars, and over a relatively short span of time.

A precise measurement of star motions in giant clusters can yield insights into how such stellar groupings formed in the early Universe, and whether an intermediate-mass black hole, one roughly 10 000 times as massive as our Sun, might be lurking among the stars.

Analysing archived images taken over a four-year period by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers have made the most accurate measurements yet of the motions of more than 100 000 cluster inhabitants, the largest survey to date to study the movement of stars in any cluster.

"It takes sophisticated computer programs to measure the tiny shifts in the positions of the stars that occur over a period of just four years," says astronomer Jay Anderson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, who conducted the study with fellow Institute astronomer Roeland van der Marel. "Ultimately, though, it is Hubble's razor-sharp vision that is the key to our ability to measure stellar motions in this cluster."

Van der Marel adds: "With Hubble, you can wait three or four years and detect the motions of the stars more accurately than if you were using a ground-based telescope and were waiting 50 years."

The astronomers used the Hubble images, which were taken in 2002 and 2006, to make a movie simulation of the frenzied motion of the cluster's stars. The movie shows the stars' projected migration over the next 10,000 years.

Identified as a globular star cluster in 1867, Omega Centauri is one of roughly 150 such clusters in the Milky Way. The behemoth stellar grouping is the biggest and brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way, and one of the few that can be seen by the unaided eye. Located in the constellation of Centaurus, Omega Centauri can be seen in the southern skies.

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Anderson and R. van der Marel (STScI)

See Also:

• Hubble Captures Surprising Star Motions
• Simulate Star Clusters with Second Life Mod
• Rogue Black Holes Could Careen Across Milky Way
• Hubble Captures Image of Strange Giant Galaxy
• Black Hole Found in Unexpected Place
• Galactic Supervolcano Erupts From Black Hole
• Supermassive Black Holes Formed by Colliding Primordial Galaxies

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Laurie Roth for President

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

Laurie Roth for President

See more at www.youtube.com

 

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PRESS RELEASE FROM TEAM LAURIE ROTH FOR PRESIDENT 2012: OFFICIAL DECLARATION

Amplify’d from imaginepublicity.com

PRESS RELEASE FROM TEAM LAURIE ROTH 2012: OFFICIAL DECLARATION

Dr. Laurie Roth is officially declaring her bid to run for President of the United States as a patriot, conservative, independent candidate.  In California she will be on the ballot, running on  the American Independent Party ticket . Dr. Laurie Roth is a National Radio Talk show host on air for over 11 years www.therothshow.com. She follows and covers the hard hitting issues that affect and infect our entire country.  She is a publisher of articles in many conservative journals that put light on critical issues America faces most and media and political power class avoid.  Journals include:  www.canadafreepress.com,  www.newswithview.com,  www.newmediajournal.us,  www.teaparty.org, www.conservativefoundation.com,   www.centurycitynews.com.

The issues:

* Forced an unconstitutional health care bill.

* Obama sued and stood against his own Governors.

* Threatened and targeted coal plants for closure.

* Breached the war powers act of 1973 and put us in an illegal war in Libya

* Lack of border security.   200 billion in drug trade and between 10-40 million illegal aliens who receive citizen tax payer dollars for health care, education and  housing.

* Insulted and turned against  Israel.

* Obama is ineligible to be President.  He has presented a verified forgery of his long form birth certificate on April 27th 2011.

Dr. Laurie Roth supporters which include companies and individuals, join together in  confidence of her candidacy.  This will lead to victory for our nation.   She and others know she is the candidate who will make the real difference for our country.  Many have prayed about this and are confident that Dr. Laurie Roth is what America needs.  In her published book ‘The People’s President’ her platform is clear.  It is  available at www.amazon.com  and book stores.

As the leader Dr. Laurie Roth will:

Institute a Federal 2% point of purchase tax.  No group will be exempt.  10-20 trillion dollars annually will be collected, while citizens are liberated from massive, controlling tax oppression.

Become totally energy Independent in 4 years.  America will be the largest exporter of energy in the world. Disconnect from OPEC.  Employ 20 million people in energy infrastructure jobs:  natural gas,  oil,  nuclear,  solar and alternative fuels.

Secure Americas borders.  Stop  illegal aliens.   Stop illegal drug trade.  Use all technology available.  Honor those who choose to be a citizen of the United States who do it properly and legally.

Create Jobs.   The 2% point of purchase tax will create millions of jobs in the nation.   Infrastructure projects,  small businesses and home based businesses will be supported.

Restore  international relationships and image.  Lead America with the revision of the American Start Treaty.  Stand against Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism.  Institute fair trade agreements.

Promote Judeo Christian values in America.  This includes our nation’s historical strength from God and the Holy Bible – including Christian principles – prayer, freedom, exceptionalism and supporting a movement away from regulation, taxation and litigation.  Those who disagree are not assailed.

Dr. Laurie Roth is a patriot and survivor who loves God,  family, country and the Constitution of the United States.

For victory we need:

Endorsements

Financial contributions

Volunteers

Roth is running on the party of  ‘REAL’ – Responsive,  Excellence,  Americanism and Liberty.  Dr. Roth’s experience dedication and courage will serve America.

You will be a partner to make America great.   Your support will be what is necessary to create the momentum  to make America the country that people strive to be a citizen of, because of strength, opportunity and freedom.

Join this movement.  Visit:  www.therothshow.com,  www.youtube.com/teamlaurieroth2012, www.laurieroth2012.com

Your emails, endorsements and financial contributions are appreciated.

Thank you and God bless you.

Contacts:

Laurie Roth

drljroth@aol.com

www.rothrevolution.ning.com

Sheryl McGrath

sherylmcgrath@comast.net

Rev.  Lainie Dowell

Revldowel-clergywomen@erols.com Read more at imaginepublicity.com

 

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THE PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT PLATFORM

Laurie Roth For President 2012

Amplify’d from www.wnd.com

ELECTION 2012

Another woman jumps into race for president

Claims Obama's birth certificate is verified forgery, a major issue

By Joe Kovacs

Laurie Roth on the cover of Cash Box Magazine

Just when you thought the field of candidates for president in 2012 was full, a national radio talk-show host is now in the race, claiming Barack Obama is not even eligible for office because he has presented a forged birth certificate to the nation.

Laurie Roth from Washington state is running not as a Republican, but as a self-described patriot and conservative on the American Independent Party ticket. She says she's already on the ballot in California, and will take steps to make sure her name is listed in the other 49 states.

She joins Republican Michele Bachmann as one of at least two women seeking the Oval Office in 2012. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has indicated she will not be tossing her hat in the ring during this election cycle.

Get the New York Times best-seller "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to be President," autographed by Jerome Corsi.

"I know this will be like climbing up Mount Everest in a bikini with no oxygen as far as difficulty," Roth said, "but I love my country and believe I have the right ideas at the right time – not political, not legal, and not international but boldly American and freedom-loving."

Roth is a singer/songwriter with five CD albums to her credit, with one track landing her on Billboard's top 40 and on the cover of Cash Box Magazine. She also holds a Ph.D. in counseling and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

On her list of issues, she highlights her contention Obama is not even legally eligible to hold the presidency.

"He has presented a verified forgery of his long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011," she said.

Among other complaints against Obama, Roth says the president forced an unconstitutional health-care bill, sued and stood against his own governors, threatened and targeted coal plants for closure, breached the War Powers Act of 1973 by putting America into an illegal war in Libya, insulted and turned against Israel, and has failed to secure the nation's borders.

As far as her goals as president, Roth says, "I will overhaul our entire tax system."

She's looking to abolish all current taxes and institute a federal 2 percent point-of-purchase consumption tax she believes will create millions of jobs.

Laurie Roth

"No group will be exempt," she says, claiming annual collected revenues would be in the range of $10 to $20 trillion, "while citizens are liberated from massive, controlling tax oppression."

All other taxes on income, payroll, capital gains, gasoline, property and estates would be eradicated under her plan.

Another pledge by Roth is to become totally energy independent in four years.

"America will be the largest exporter of energy in the world," says Roth. "Disconnect from OPEC. Employ 20 million people in energy infrastructure jobs [including] natural gas, oil, nuclear, solar and alternative fuels."

Roth also says she's looking to restore America's international relationships and image, institute fair-trade agreements and stand against Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism.

She's also unabashedly promoting Judeo-Christian values.

"This includes our nation's historical strength from God and the Holy Bible – including Christian principles – prayer, freedom, exceptionalism and supporting a movement away from regulation, taxation and litigation. Those who disagree are not assailed."

Her online biography notes, "She is equally at home on horseback or motorcycle and enjoys scuba diving. She loves to watch NASCAR Nextel Cup Racing and has always liked vintage cars. Her favorite food is ... well ... just a hamburger, but with the works!"

She's just published a book titled, "The People's President," outlining her stances. Read more at www.wnd.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.independent.co.uk

Revealed: publisher owned by the Catholic Church sells pornography

Germany's bishops promise to stop the company's distribution of erotic novels

Tony Paterson

Germany's biggest Catholic-owned publishing house has been rocked by disclosures that it has been selling thousands of pornographic novels with titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer's Whore with the full assent of the country's leading bishops.

The revelations made in the publishing-industry newsletter Buchreport concern Weltbild, a company with an annual €1.7bn (£1.5bn) turnover and 6,400 employees. It is Germany's largest bookseller after Amazon and wholly owned by the Catholic Church.

Buchreport revealed that Weltbild's massive assortment of titles available to customers online includes some 2,500 "erotic" books with unmistakably lewd titles including Call Me Slut!, Take Me Here, Take Me Now! and Lawyer's Whore, to name a few. The publisher's website also pictures the titles' lascivious dust jackets that feature colour photographs of scantily clad women in high heels and erotic underwear.

Yesterday, Carel Haff, Weltbild's managing director, was quoted as saying that the revelations had provoked "a very intense and critical dialogue" within the company. He said discussions were under way about possibly limiting the assortment of titles that would be available in future.

Catholic bishops responded with a statement claiming that "a filtering system failure" at the publishing house had allowed the books to stray on to the market. "We will put a stop to the distribution of possibly pornographic content in future," they said.

But Bernhard Müller, editor of the Catholic magazine PUR, dismissed the clerics' reaction as grossly hypocritical. He alleged that the pornography scandal at Weltbild had been going on for at least a decade with the Church's full knowledge. Mr Müller said that in 2008, a group of concerned Catholics had sent bishops a 70-page document containing irrefutable evidence that Weltbild published books that promoted pornography, Satanism and magic. They demanded that the publisher withdraw the titles.

But their protests appear to have been completely ignored. Writing in the Die Welt newspaper, Mr Müller said most of the bishops refused to respond to the charges. "The sudden proclaimed astonishment of many church leaders that pornographic material is being distributed by their publishing house, is play acting – bad play acting," Mr Müller said. "Believers have been complaining to their bishops about this for years."

The Catholic Church bought Weltbild more than 30 years ago. The publisher has gradually transformed itself into one of Germany's largest media companies with the help of some €182mof Catholic Church tax levied on believers. To increase its profits, in 1998 the company merged with five other publishing houses that market pornographic titles. One of them is Droemer Knaur, which is 50 per cent church-owned. Another is Blue Panther Books, which was excluded from the list of participating publishers at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair allegedly because of the pornographic content of is titles.

It emerged yesterday that in an attempt to clear itself of potential embarrassment over the sale of porn, the Catholic Church tried to sell Weltbild in 2009. But the bishops apparently abandoned the idea after they failed to get the price they were asking. Read more at www.independent.co.uk

 

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Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Catholic Church Abuse Cases: Dutch Church Sets Up Compensation Panel

The new church in Delft.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The Dutch branch of the Catholic church has agreed to launch a compensation system that clears the way for victims of abuse by priests and other church workers to receive payments of up to euro100,000 ($138,000).

The country's Bishops' Conference and Conference of Religious Orders said in a statement Monday the new compensation system will likely come into effect next month.

Thousands of past cases of alleged sexual abuse by Dutch priests are under investigation by an independent but church-funded commission in the Netherlands, where the Catholic church has more than 4 million members.

The new compensation system has a scale of payments starting at euro5,000 ($6,886) and rising to a maximum of euro100,000 depending on the nature of the abuse.

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